


Go Gentle

by Allecto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:20:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allecto/pseuds/Allecto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the nature of a constellation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Gentle

He is not a Death Eater.

He has watched them come and go, searching always for a way around the final gasp of breath, the passage to the Underworld, the River Styx or a hundred years of wandering. A thousand years, and then a hundred, then another thousand, a second hundred, still yet a thousand and a hundred more, and earlier, into the days before writing, before mythos, when the stories were true, they have come to his door, and he beat them back.

Hercules was the first, seeking atonement, to slice his soul from his body, but his guardianship is eternal, and he found another soon enough. The apples are dangerous, and he will not leave them for long.

In the old days it was serpents, great long serpents with three-forked tongues and fire and claws that could cleave a man in two. All he retains now is the name, and even that is not what it used to be. They laugh at his name now, anger him, and he picks and picks in return, niggling beneath their skin but never damning them unless they seek his charge.

The woman knows--when Lucius would have sent him far away, had him learn the darker magics (as if he didn't know already deeper, darker things) she kept him close. She cannot have them for herself, but she can sense them, always, for she is fair of face, and yearning in her spirit. Not for nothing was she named after him, the eternal lover of self--they call to her, the apples, but he will not give her one. She, like the others, will have to kill him first.

The Nameless One who branded Lucius yearns to brand him too. He has delved into the darkness, transformed, but for all his serpentine bearing, he is no snake. He fears death, longs to devour it, and doesn't understand that it isn't death which he should eat. No fruit consumes that river, or is nourished by it. The Styx kills all it touches, even Draco. His soul has found new homes for ages now, and always, always death will come again. He is no Death Eater--he has seen too much of life, and knows too well that rest is sweet.

Potter never understood that either, but then, Potter understands very little. He claims to speak to serpents, but Draco's language is beyond him.

He gave one once, a gift, to a man who encouraged and guarded him, the man who spoke with a tongue as forked as his, and was closest to a serpent he's seen in a thousand years (Salazar was closer, but he wanted eternity.) It's in a glass cabinet, magically protected, guarded there as well as if he still had it, and nary a bite to be found. It is safe with Snape, as safe as once he was, when he let down his guard and slept in moist stone walls. Perhaps it is safe enough that Hera will call him home, back to the heavens and a nest between bears, and he will truly sleep at last.


End file.
